really should be my personal motto. I keep venturing out to see bands that seem to be derivative, self absorbed and well sucky and then blaming my age for my point of view. Well bollocks to that. Yes I listen to more i-pod stuff than I do radio, yes I'm starting to seal the edges of my musical time capsule but you know what I'm still open to somebody good. So wow me. I have CD $'s. I have download bucks aplenty. Come show me what you've got all.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
On yer bike mate...
So with Jude graduated (post graduated?) my thoughts about a car for michigan turn to obsession. Of course being a professor in management and the environment in a school known for environmental research means that Jude can't just turn up in any old car. The US may not have cought on to Carbon Neutral Fascism yet - but it's coming and Jude wants to look and feel clean. Which means a car that looks and feels clean (and masks the fact that its main purpose will be to shuttle her back and forth to an airport whereupon she'll board public enemy #2 and blow any savings she's made and more)
The real problem of course is finding a car in the US that does decent miles to the gallon. The US likes its cars to be fat and lazy - to have huge displacement, fat torque curves and wallowy seats seperated by think arm rests otop which rest 1700KCal Starbucks drinks.
Take for example the VW Golf (Rabbit in the US)...a frugal 1.4L car in the UK the entry model here is a 2.5l that 24.7mpg in real world driving conditions. Even when you add the 20% that brings a US gallon up to th esame size as a UK gallon you're looking at just under 30mpg - and that's considered pretty darn good (the 2.5L VW is a compact car here)
So we're looking at a Honda Fit (think Jazz with bigger engine), at a Suzuki SX4 (think Suzuki SX4 with standard all wheel drive, 143hp and 24mpg - yikes) and at things like the Toyota Matrix / Pontiac Vibe , the base model (2.0) Ford Focus as well as a Prius that's great in normal conditions but only manages 31mpg in the cold winters of Michigan.
Diesel isn't really an option. You can't find diesel cars. You can't find Diesel at the pumps and the thought of importing from California (where emissions standards make cars cleaner) fills me with red tape heebie jeebies.
Really it comes down to one question. Can the Honda FIt stand up to a Michigan winter or do we need a real 4 wheel drive vehicle in which case the SX4 is the most fuel efficient option. Why the worry? Well the average temperature is sub zero in Detroit for 3 months of the year (lows around -8C on average in January). The annual average temperature is in single digits (Centigrade) and you're looking at around 4 feet of snow a year - if there are no major storms. And there are often major storms.
Anyway lots of things to think about as we headto the NYC MOTOR SHOW this afternoon - templates in hand, ready to take a look and see what we can see. What feels right. And who has the best deals. Remember that cars may be huge and inefficient here but they're cheap... 2.5l Golf - 7,600GBP, Toyota Yaris 5,800GBP, fully load 4*4 SX4 with every extra 7.800 quid.
I just rubbed my hands with glee.
The real problem of course is finding a car in the US that does decent miles to the gallon. The US likes its cars to be fat and lazy - to have huge displacement, fat torque curves and wallowy seats seperated by think arm rests otop which rest 1700KCal Starbucks drinks.
Take for example the VW Golf (Rabbit in the US)...a frugal 1.4L car in the UK the entry model here is a 2.5l that 24.7mpg in real world driving conditions. Even when you add the 20% that brings a US gallon up to th esame size as a UK gallon you're looking at just under 30mpg - and that's considered pretty darn good (the 2.5L VW is a compact car here)
So we're looking at a Honda Fit (think Jazz with bigger engine), at a Suzuki SX4 (think Suzuki SX4 with standard all wheel drive, 143hp and 24mpg - yikes) and at things like the Toyota Matrix / Pontiac Vibe , the base model (2.0) Ford Focus as well as a Prius that's great in normal conditions but only manages 31mpg in the cold winters of Michigan.
Diesel isn't really an option. You can't find diesel cars. You can't find Diesel at the pumps and the thought of importing from California (where emissions standards make cars cleaner) fills me with red tape heebie jeebies.
Really it comes down to one question. Can the Honda FIt stand up to a Michigan winter or do we need a real 4 wheel drive vehicle in which case the SX4 is the most fuel efficient option. Why the worry? Well the average temperature is sub zero in Detroit for 3 months of the year (lows around -8C on average in January). The annual average temperature is in single digits (Centigrade) and you're looking at around 4 feet of snow a year - if there are no major storms. And there are often major storms.
Anyway lots of things to think about as we headto the NYC MOTOR SHOW this afternoon - templates in hand, ready to take a look and see what we can see. What feels right. And who has the best deals. Remember that cars may be huge and inefficient here but they're cheap... 2.5l Golf - 7,600GBP, Toyota Yaris 5,800GBP, fully load 4*4 SX4 with every extra 7.800 quid.
I just rubbed my hands with glee.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Dr Jude...
... so Jude is now Dr. Jude. Dr. Jude PhD. Which is pretty cool. The defense was tense and scary and underlined all that I feared about academia but Jude was calm, made her points, scored a couple of points of her own and left the building a Doctor. Very cool.
In a train station now (wireless huh?) but will post more later
In a train station now (wireless huh?) but will post more later
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Playing Defense
Jude defends today. Meaning that in 12 hrs or so she'll either be Dr. Jude or she'll be temporarily rueing the day. The PhD. hasn't been the easiest of times. There's been death, sickness and all manner of family bits and pieces. There's been loneliness (you try living in Wappinger's Falls and having no reason to leave the house) and lots of times when we've felt trapped... turning down jobs because they didn't fit with the visa or areas of study because they didn't fit with advisor specialty. Financially it's been a disaster too - costing us close to $1m in lost earnings and opportunity.
Yet here we are - in New York, new friends around us. old friends back in the fold, me in a new job. Jude with an offer on the table and ready to start soon. The sum of human knowledge expanded a little. Can't be bad, can it?
Here's to closing this chapter and opening the next.
Yet here we are - in New York, new friends around us. old friends back in the fold, me in a new job. Jude with an offer on the table and ready to start soon. The sum of human knowledge expanded a little. Can't be bad, can it?
Here's to closing this chapter and opening the next.
Monday, April 09, 2007
The great defender
Jude defends tomorrow. If it goes well then she's Dr. Jude. If it doesn't then she's back to square one with a a whole hill o' razor blades to climb. I have to say that the US PhD. system seems far more rigorous than the UK version. Heresy I know but she had to take two years of graduate classes in some pretty hardcore methodologies before she was even allowed to start thinking about what she'd do and the pressure to publish and appear on public stages has been constant and intense.
The actual defense is a mixture of public forum and private torture. So I'm going to head up and watch the presentation / opening questions before being kicked out while they grill her in what I'm thinking of as the Mastermind specialist sunject round. After that round they kick her out and deliberate. This can take anything from 10 minutes to 4 hrs.
My contribution to the preparation has been minimal. I've taken pictures (like the one above) for the powerpoint slides (20 in the presentation, 43 prepared in case of questions), I've slouched off with the dog to provide 'alone time' and I've plied with wine when I thought it neccessary. And at every step and stage my conviction never to follow the PhD. path has grown stronger. It takes a certain type of person here and I'm not that type of person.
But it's 8.28 and my train is at 8.42. I must dash. Have a great day all.
The actual defense is a mixture of public forum and private torture. So I'm going to head up and watch the presentation / opening questions before being kicked out while they grill her in what I'm thinking of as the Mastermind specialist sunject round. After that round they kick her out and deliberate. This can take anything from 10 minutes to 4 hrs.
My contribution to the preparation has been minimal. I've taken pictures (like the one above) for the powerpoint slides (20 in the presentation, 43 prepared in case of questions), I've slouched off with the dog to provide 'alone time' and I've plied with wine when I thought it neccessary. And at every step and stage my conviction never to follow the PhD. path has grown stronger. It takes a certain type of person here and I'm not that type of person.
But it's 8.28 and my train is at 8.42. I must dash. Have a great day all.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Sleeping diseases
I think that I slept for about 10 hrs yesterday. This is unusual for me as I'm not really one for lie-ins. However I've been knackered ever since our two day session last week. There's something about being responsible for every step of a process that really does slow you down - you get to the end and you just crash. This time it was stimulus, venues, exercises, shopping trips, introductions, ideas, groupings and enough energy to carry everybody through it all. I though that I was fine, I wasn't obviously.
Meanwhile Jude is up at the crack of St. Early the Riser and starting on charts for her thesis defence. It's on Tuesday and everytime she sits down to look at the screen she gets wound just a little tighter. It's an amazing physical reaction and one that I recognize after 4 years in an advertising agency that worked only on crisis and panic. Most of which was self created.
The problem with where I used to work was size. It was a huge agency, with huge clients and lots of people. The problem was that the number of great people, the people you wanted to work with and for, was tiny. And these people were in demand, on everything. So if you wanted them you had to convince the powers that be that your problem was bigger, more urgent and more scary than any other problem in the building.
"I need these people now or the whole account is going up for review, the work won't be delivered, we'll be sued and the client is threatening to take a crap through your letterbox." was the general tone.
This led of course to several consequences. Hyperbole is one thing, constant hyperbole starts to have a physical effect. People started to believe the desperation of their own circumstance and the stress levels soared. They aged. They got sick. They went grey. They upped the doses of alcohol. They looked for people to blame, for people to shout out.
And then of course everything was rushed. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so of course thought, care and attention to detail were frowned upon. "Get it out of the door Jenkins" was too often the mentality.
And finally there were the defections. Constant seige leads to shell shock and people leaving the trenches to pursue careers in cabbage management, or fluffy hat wearing.
It was miserable and right now Jude is in her own solo version of this hell. Thank God Tuesday sees the end of it.
Meanwhile Jude is up at the crack of St. Early the Riser and starting on charts for her thesis defence. It's on Tuesday and everytime she sits down to look at the screen she gets wound just a little tighter. It's an amazing physical reaction and one that I recognize after 4 years in an advertising agency that worked only on crisis and panic. Most of which was self created.
The problem with where I used to work was size. It was a huge agency, with huge clients and lots of people. The problem was that the number of great people, the people you wanted to work with and for, was tiny. And these people were in demand, on everything. So if you wanted them you had to convince the powers that be that your problem was bigger, more urgent and more scary than any other problem in the building.
"I need these people now or the whole account is going up for review, the work won't be delivered, we'll be sued and the client is threatening to take a crap through your letterbox." was the general tone.
This led of course to several consequences. Hyperbole is one thing, constant hyperbole starts to have a physical effect. People started to believe the desperation of their own circumstance and the stress levels soared. They aged. They got sick. They went grey. They upped the doses of alcohol. They looked for people to blame, for people to shout out.
And then of course everything was rushed. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so of course thought, care and attention to detail were frowned upon. "Get it out of the door Jenkins" was too often the mentality.
And finally there were the defections. Constant seige leads to shell shock and people leaving the trenches to pursue careers in cabbage management, or fluffy hat wearing.
It was miserable and right now Jude is in her own solo version of this hell. Thank God Tuesday sees the end of it.
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